Why Stephen Colbert Is YouTube's Best Friend
Comedy Central anchors Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert may be deposed in court in the ongoing Viacom v. Google lawsuit. Why? Because both of the anchors are employed by Viacom, and both have made favorable comments about YouTube on air.
Last year I wrote a post called Why Stephen Colbert is Google's Best Friend, and the logic of its argument has never been more true:
Enter Stephen Colbert. The faux media maven has made an art of using the Internet--especially online video--to promote his Comedy Central show. After successfully inciting his users to edit Wikipedia entries on his behalf (the traffic uptick may have crashed the server), Colbert exhorted fans to create video mashups of his light-saber antics in front of a green screen. The result: Hundreds of thousands of people watched his show on YouTube. Apparently satisified with the exposure on YouTube, Colbert is now asking participants to upload videos to colbertnation.com.
Thus, Colbert has become a prime example of Mayer's message: The Internet bolsters your audience, it doesn't degrade it. Colbert's show is on TV for 2 hours every week. The Internet is on 24/7.
Colbert's success bridging the offline/online gap is good by itself, but that's not all. Colbert's embrace of online video will eventually translate to more ad dollars for Google and Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom. Google recently began testing video ads using the media company's channels, including shows from Comedy Central.
So now imagine if Viacom started using Colbert's video mashups as advertisements. In a media world where fame is its own reward, show me a fan of Colbert Nation who wouldn't want his creation syndicated across the Internet.
And show me a TV exec who wouldn't smile at that virtuous circle of profits.
